SMASHED
A drama, directed by James Ponsoldt, about a mar-
ried couple (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron
Paul) whose relationship is threatened by their
drinking. Co-starring Octavia Spencer and Nick
Offerman. Opening Oct. 12. (In wide release.)
3, 2, 1 . . . FRANKIE GO BOOM
A comedy, directed by Jordan Roberts, about a
man who, having kicked his drug habit, remains
cruel to his family. Starring Chris O'Dowd, Char-
lie Hunnam, and Lizzy Caplan. Opening Oct. 12.
(In limited release.)
TWO YEARS AT SEA
Ben Rivers directed this documentary, about a
loner in the Scottish Highlands. Opening Oct.
12. (Anthology Film Archives.)
THE ULTIMATE WISH: ENDING THE
NUCLEAR AGE
A documentary, directed by Robert Richter, about
Sakue Shimohira, a survivor of the atomic bomb-
ing of Nagasaki, who seeks to eliminate nuclear
weapons. Opening Oct. 12. (Quad Cinemas.)
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ARBITRAGE
In a single week, the life of Robert Miller (Richard
Gere), a swathed-in- Brioni hedge-fund manager, goes
to hell. After making some bad bets and manipu-
lating the books, he wants to sell his company to a
banle He tries to steal away for a night with his
mistress, Julie (Laetitia Casta), a swank French gal-
lery owner, but his car spins out of control, Julie
dies, and Miller runs away from the accident. The
director Nicholas Jarecki's first feature is part thriller,
part character study, and it moves swiftly and con-
fidently, with many details that feel exactly right.
Miller practices moral arbitrage in his life, weighing
the penalties of lying to his family against the losses
from a blown business deal; he's a hyper-rational
man who keeps on calculating everything he does
until he winds up in a void. With Tim Roth, as a
ferrety New York cop; Nate Parker, as a young man
who holds Miller's fate in his hands; Susan Sarandon,
as Miller's wife; and Brit Marling, as his financial-whiz
daughter. When things don't work out for the hedge-
fund manager, Gere looks drawn and desperate-
you see the skull of a handsome man now aging,
and it's a shock. His impatience and anger are much
closer to the surface than in the past; at times, he
achieves the self-justifying rage that comes so easily
to Al Pacino. It's his best performance yet.-David
Denby (Reviewed in our issue of 9/24/12.) (In wide
release and as video on demand.)
END OF WATCH
Jumpy and exciting. Again and again, two gutsy Los
Angeles cops, Brian Taylor Uake Gyllenhaal) and
Mike Zavala (Michael Peña), plunge into sordid
stucco houses in South Central Los Angeles and find
traces of a Mexican drug-cartel operation. The cops
don't always know what is going on or what one
confrontation has to do with another; they're not
part of a "plot" but just slogging through the unsta-
ble, day-by-day existential mess of police work. The
writer-director, David Ayer, has a talent for violent
confrontations and filthy talk. A local gang (work-
ing under orders from south of the border) definitely
sets a standard for squalid thuggery. Conversations
consist almost entirely of variations on the F-word.
Ayer sets up the gang as the essence of self-destroying
evil-nihilism as a working method and a game-
and the two cops as order and good will personi-
fied. Catching things on the fly, Ayer uses a hand-
held camera, spinning down alleys, up stairways, in
and out of apartments. One officer is also intermit-
tently making his own movie, which is confusing
and unnecessary: we share the men's point of view
without it.-D.D. (9/24/12) (In wide release.)
GA YBY
An affectionate comedy about a New York yoga in-
structor Uenn Harris) who enlists the aid of her gay
best friend (Matthew Wilkas) in an effort to have a
child. The director and writer, Jonathan Lisecki (who
is married to Alex Ross, a writer for this magazine),
gives this story a modest, quip-filled heartbeat; noth-
ing is painted too broadly, and the complications
and awkwardness of the situation play out with
great warmth. Harris and Wilkas are an amusing
odd couple, with Harris giving a particularly brisk
and memorable performance. She's as deft with
physical comedy as she is at nailing a good zinger.
With some nice, around-the-edges turns by Louis
Cancelmi, Anna Margaret Hollyman, and Lisecki
himself.-Bruce Diones (In limited release.)
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE
This documentary by David France traces the his-
tory of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)
from its impassioned beginnings to its splintered
end. Relying heavily on old news footage, home
movies, and interviews with former activists, France
Bruce Willis). What should he do? The reason-
ing behind all this may not reward prolonged in-
spection, but Johnson is smart enough to press
onward with his plot, leaving us with neither the
time nor the desire to linger over the logic; bet-
ter still, the prevailing mood, despite a number
of frantic set pieces, is one of wistfulness and
doubt, with the two J oes sizing each other up,
and a tough young woman (Emily Blunt) show-
ing them, and us, one way to escape the grip of
fate. The movie shifts not just between decades
but from town to country, and from crazed to
calm; as for the ending, anyone who gives it away
should be forcibly looped. With Jeff Daniels, as
TABLES FOR TWO
HOSPODA
321 E. 73rd St. (212-861-1038)-Czechs like a
nice big head on their beer, and as soon as you
sit down at Hospoda, in the Bohemian National
Hall, you are welcomed with a small glass of
beer that is almost all head. The bubbles of froth
are tiny, as in a cappuccino, and the effect is like
a sweet, thin cream, with a sour edge of grain
buried somewhere in the flavor. It's called mlíko,
meaning milk, and normally comes only from a
keg's first or last glass; here it's produced by a
special attachment on the tap that controls how
much air enters the pour. This high-tech render-
ing of something traditional typifies the enter-
prise at Hospoda. The name means "pub," but
the room eschews nostalgia for something sparer.
The walls feature a long, continuous mural cut
into dark wood and lit from behind. Made by a
Prague graffiti artist named Masker, it whimsi-
cally references national clichés-overflowing beer
mugs, Skodas-that the restaurant itself seems
anxious to avoid.
The menu, which changes monthly, curbs the
stodgy, dumpling-prone proclivities of Czech fare,
aiming at something sleekly international, albeit
with one foot still in Central Europe. In early
fall, it featured Hawaiian opah, possibly the world's
most un-Czech fish. The chef, Katie Busch, is at-
tracted to unusual, slightly extreme flavors. Goat
cheese on a green salad is not baked or grilled
but deliberately singed. Often somewhat conven-
tional elements are given a surreal twist. Slow-
cooked chicken breast comes with black -currant
foam, pea shoots, and a millet cake doused in
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acacia honey. You wouldn't want to eat chicken
like this every day, but it's an enlivening experi-
ment: the millet cake, with the honey caramel-
ized on the bottom, gives the impression of a col-
lision between dinner and breakfast. Sane dishes
are available, too (poached lobster, veal schnit-
zel, duck-leg confit), and execution is uniformly
excellent. There's a bit of an over-reliance on
foams and truffle oil, however, and it's possible
to wish for just a few more Czech classics. One of
the most striking dishes is a variation on oblozené
chlebícky (an open-faced sandwich with poached
egg and Prague ham). Here the bread is split open,
stuffed with ham, gherkin, and onion, dressed with
egg on the outside, and fried. The result is some-
where between scrambled eggs and French toast,
and even if you haven't had many pilsners you
can see it has the makings of a world-class hang-
over food.
The Bohemian National Hall dates from the
days when Y orkville had a big Czech diaspora,
and in 2001 the Czech government took it over
for use as a consulate. Hospoda, with its endear-
ing mix of caprice and earnestness, shares this
sense of cultural ambassadorship. The place is
often busiest right after work, when consular em-
ployees crowd in, evidently keen to maintain their
statistical lead: Czechs consume the most beer
per capita of any nation on earth. (Open daily for
dinner and Sundays for brunch. Main courses
$25-$39.)
-Leo Carey
chronicles the movement's vigorous street politics in
the late eighties and early nineties, when its mem-
bers protested the federal government's and the phar-
maceutical companies' grievously slow responses to
the AIDS crisis. The collected archival footage, show-
ing demonstrations at New York's City Hall, St. Vin-
cent's Hospital, and N.I.H. and ED.A. facilities, is
riveting, and brings home the genuine heroics of
many of the activists. The eloquence of the move-
ment's primary speakers (including Ann Northrop,
Peter Staley, Iris Long, Bob Rafsky, and the show-
stopper, Larry Kramer) makes this film moving and
essential.-B.D. (In limited release.)
LOOPER
Rian Johnson's new thriller is ideal fare for those
who enjoy having their minds tied into knots by
chronological mischief. Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
who previously starred in Johnson's" Brick," plays
a guy called Joe, who lives in 2044 and has a
well-paid job-killing people who are squirrelled
back through time, from thirty years in the fu-
ture. All goes well until his latest victim, who ap-
pears kneeling before him on the edge of a field,
turns out to be his older self (now played by
the bearded cynic who runs the time-travelling
show.-Anthony Lane (10/1/12) (In wide release.)
MARNIE
Tippi Hedren's cool grace in "The Birds" hardly
prepares a viewer for her porcelain froideur as a
sexually traumatized kleptomaniac in Alfred Hitch-
cock's psychologically resonant, visually transcen-
dent film, from 1964. Sean Connery co-stars as a
businessman who hires Marnie as his secretary,
lusts mightily after her, and, catching her with a
hand in his till, takes it upon himself to win her
heart-and her body-by healing her mind. Bor-
rowing liberally from himself (notably, several tropes
from "Spellbound,''''Verrigo,'' and "Psycho"), Hitch-
cock gives his obsessions luridly free rein-inten-
tionally and not. He was, in fact, obsessed with
Hedren, whose rejections he repaid with harsh
treatment, and it shows in his images: few films
have looked as longingly and as relentlessly at a
woman, few onscreen gazes at an actress have so
perfectly crystallized an integral and unique style
of performance, and few performances have so
precisely defined a director's world view, even unto
the vanishing point. He could, and did, go no fur-
THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 15, 2012 17